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1841 Treviso

I t was little Lia—who was not so little anymore but in her twenties, married and with three daughters—who, after the death of her beloved Mari and her husband, Holmes, mailed the log to the archive.

Their love story was too great to be locked away in an attic, forgotten and eventually lost. Mari had known this, and indeed, it was why she’d tasked Lia with caring for the log—and deciding its fate—once Mari and Holmes were long gone.

***

Despite the passage of two decades, Lia remembered her rescue from the tiny island of Ischia as though it were yesterday. It had been very late at night; she’d been sleeping fitfully on the stone floor of a damp, tucked-away cell in the bowels of Castello Aragonese. Only a barred window let in any fresh air.

Vivi and six-year-old Lia had been separated from one another upon their arrival at the castle, but their cells were next to one another, and they’d been able to talk through their open-air windows. Although, a few days into their imprisonment on Ischia, Vivi had stopped responding to Lia.

They must have taken her to another cell, young Lia reasoned.

Lia woke to the sound of whispers through the window. At first, she thought it a dream or the breeze or a bird flitting outside. Only at the sound of her mother’s voice did she sit up, bleary-eyed, realizing this was no dream at all. She rushed to the window, overjoyed to see her parents, as well as Mari and a man she did not recognize.

Already, her father and the strange man were removing tools—chisels and saws—from a bag. Her father also withdrew her small wooden doll from the bag. He handed it to Lia through the window.

“I have carried it with me since the moment I learned you were gone,” he said, his voice cracking. “I have not parted with it once.”

Lia reached for her doll, hugging it close. It smelled like home. “How did you find me?” she asked. She remembered the maze of stone passageways she’d been led down days ago. It seemed a miracle they’d managed to locate her.

Her mother reached into her pocket, withdrawing something. She held it up for Lia to see. “It is Viviana’s cimaruta ,” she said, eyes brimming with joy. “It was in the water, below where we stand now.”

Lia frowned, not understanding.

Mari gave a sad smile. “Once we were near this island,” she explained, “I performed the incantesimo divinatorio , begging the water to lead me to anything of the streghe . At once, the strand of hagstones began to tug us toward the north edge of the castle. It led us to the water below where we stand now. Among the rocks, just beneath the waterline, we found Vivi’s cimaruta . She must have thrown it from her cell toward the water.”

“From there,” Lia’s mother went on, “we climbed the rocks, and we found Vivi’s cell. We…saw her.”

“Is she all right?” Lia asked. “She has not said anything through the window in a few days.”

Her mother looked down, and when she spoke again, her voice was hoarse. “No, my love. We saw her body. She must have died in her cell. A few days ago, we think.” Her eyes welled with tears. “Vivi might have kept her protective cimaruta on to keep herself strong. Instead, she threw it into the sea. It was a terribly brave decision, but it led us right to you.”

Sacrifice, Lia was quickly learning, was the greatest form of love.

That night, her father and the other man—who called himself Holmes—chiseled their way around the metal bars, freeing Lia from the window. They freed the Fontana sisters, too, who were in another nearby cell. Together, the group escaped to a tiny villa on the western edge of Naples, where her father had family.

Lia had always been led to believe that no men knew of stregheria . She understood now that this was far from the truth. Some men, like her father and Holmes—who would not leave Mari’s side, and Lia quite liked him for it—knew the women’s secrets, knew everything they were capable of.

But, being the good men they were, they never breathed a word of it.

***

In the weeks to follow Lia’s rescue, the Positano streghe left the village. Though the threat of the Mazza brothers had disappeared, it was too difficult to live among the memories of all that had transpired. Further, police officials and a few men within the Fratelli Mazza enterprise were performing an inquisition, wanting to dig more closely into the suspicious drowning of Massimo Mazza—whose body eventually washed up on shore, bearing no clues to his death—followed by the sinking of two Mazza-owned vessels, the latter of which sent Matteo Mazza to his early grave, as well.

In time, though Positano experienced no more seaborne attacks, it suffered some of the same misfortunes experienced by other nearby villages: bad fishing seasons, cliffside collapses. Certainly not a place the streghe felt compelled to return to, anytime soon at least.

Most of the streghe— and their families—made their way to Treviso, west of Venice. It was close enough for the women who could not resist the call of the sea, yet far enough for those who preferred some distance from it, like Mari.

***

“Will you do me a very big favor?” Mari asked Lia, many years after the Ischia rescue, and long after the Fratelli Mazza had gone defunct.

“Of course,” sixteen-year-old Lia said.

“A few streghe are returning to Positano,” Mari explained, “to meet old friends and retrieve items from their abandoned villas. Holmes and I, we cannot go. We cannot be seen.”

Lia nodded. She knew this well: the streghe understood that exposing the truth of Mari and Holmes’s survival could put the pair at risk. Only the parish enumerator who recorded household births and deaths had any knowledge of them. But even then, Mari used Holmes’s last name. Mari DeLuca did not exist any longer.

“I’d like you to go with them,” Mari went on, “and see what there is to learn about my family. My father. Paola.”

Lia had dutifully obeyed, spending several weeks in Positano with the others, gleaning what little information she could. Mari’s father had passed away a year earlier. Paola had gone on to marry Corso, and the two were now living in Rome, though rumor had it his business interests had floundered and they were miserably unhappy.

Lia returned to Treviso to share the news with Mari, who was busy clearing out a small room off the back of the house.

When Lia walked in, Mari held up a tiny shirt, small enough for an infant. “I sewed it myself,” Mari said proudly.

“Are you—” Lia gasped, eyeing Mari’s belly, which revealed a subtle swell.

“Yes. I told Holmes only this morning. Already, he is making the baby a trekking pole.” She pointed out the window. Holmes sat on the ground, whittling away at a stick. He and Mari loved trekking, especially in the great Pale Mountains north of Treviso, in Austria.

The two women hugged in celebration. “Have you thought of a name?” Lia asked.

Mari smiled. “Well, I feel sure it is a boy. And we have decided to name him Nico.”

“Nico,” Lia echoed, liking the name at once.

Mari approached a cupboard at one side of the room and removed a few items from a shelf in order to make room for the neatly folded shirts and tunics. Lia stepped forward to help her, spotting a water-stained oilskin pouch sitting on a shelf. She frowned, and Mari motioned for her to take it out.

“Holmes kept a journal during his sea voyages,” Mari explained.

In years past, Lia had tried to ask Mari and Holmes about these voyages and why the two of them now preferred visiting the mountains over the sea. Mari explained that she’d always had a complicated relationship with the ocean. “It will take a lifetime to sort through my feelings about it,” Mari once said, “but the sea was here long before us, and it will remain long after we are gone.” She gave a little smile. “Something tells me it will be as patient as I need it to be.”

Now Mari turned to Lia, a serious expression on her face. She placed her hand on the journal. “Will you promise me something, Lia?”

“Yes. Anything.”

“I hope it is many, many years from now, but when Holmes and I are both gone, promise me you will not let this journal languish on a shelf to collect dust. There is so much within—not the least of which is the truth about our love story.”

“You are not scared of it being exposed?”

Mari gave a little laugh. “After we are gone? Not a bit. Why, perhaps there is even something within that will help someone, someday.”

Mari reached for another item on the shelf—a strand of hagstones. Lia recognized it as the same strand Mari had used to rescue her from Ischia.

“I want you to have this, too,” Mari said. “Pass it down. Whether to your daughters, or my daughters, or nieces or cousins… No matter, just keep it among us women.”

Lia took the stones in her hand, feeling the weight of them. It was a priceless gift, and unique, too: the second hagstone had a tiny starfish fossil embedded within.

“But remember,” Mari said, closing Lia’s fingers around the stones, “the treasure one seeks, whether by using the hagstones or by some other means, does not necessarily mean jewels or gems or expensive things. Your rescue from Ischia is proof of it.”

Mari placed a tiny wooden baby rattle on the newly cleared shelf.

“Sometimes,” she concluded, “the greatest treasure to be found is…love.”

* * * * *